SMBs are extending their supply chains into more regions and placing orders earlier as they cope with a growing mix of supplier delays, freight costs, tariffs and increasingly unpredictable consumer demand.
Netstock’s 2026 Supply Chain Planning Benchmark Report found there is no single dominant disruption driving 2026 supply chain planning. Rather, companies are dealing with a number of pressures at the same time, indicating a broader shift from isolated volatility to what Netstock calls “supply chain chaos.”
The results are from the supply chain planning software provider’s survey of more than 2,500 customers around the world and responses from more than 150 users at small and midsize businesses with annual revenue of less than $250 million.
“Supplier lead-time variability was cited as the number one inventory planning challenge by 29% of respondents. This was followed by raw material and input costs (23%), freight and shipping costs (22%) and changes in demand (21%).
This picture becomes even more pronounced when respondents were allowed to name multiple pressures. Supplier timing was a top-three concern for 77% of participants, followed by freight and shipping (72%), raw materials and input costs (66%) and demand changes (57%).
The results suggest a potentially more fragmented freight environment as smaller companies expand their supplier pools, change purchase orders between countries, and shift shipment timing rather than rely on the relatively simple inventory-building strategies seen in 2025.
Last year, tariffs dominated supply chain concerns, and companies pulled forward orders and built up additional inventory buffers. Trade policy still figures in the mix in 2026, but Netstock found shipping-route disruptions, raw-material costs, demand volatility, and inconsistent supplier performance are increasingly overlapping.
More suppliers making more freight lanes
One of the most obvious freight market implications is that SMBs continue to diversify their sourcing.
For companies sourcing from the United States, China, Canada and Mexico – the four regions tracked consistently across Netstock’s three most recent benchmark reports – the share sourcing from at least two regions increased from 45% in 2024 to 49% in 2025 and 55% in 2026.
While diversifying suppliers reduces reliance on a single country or source, Netstock said it also adds complexity by expanding the supplier base, increasing lead times and the number of freight routes.
For freight markets, that could mean more complex networks as importers spread purchase orders across several countries. This could mean smaller or less predictable shipping patterns across ocean, air, trucking and intermodal networks.
Companies are also beginning to reassess offshore sourcing.
The proportion of companies saying they prefer offshore suppliers fell from 31% in 2024 to 28% in 2025 and 21% this year. During the same period the preference for domestic sourcing increased from 19% to 21% and then 23%.
However, SMBs sourcing from two or more supplier regions have increased by 10 percentage points since 2024.
The growing concern of China lead times
China continues to be a key node in many of these sourcing networks, but companies that rely on Chinese suppliers have seen a substantial deterioration in lead-time conditions.
61% of SMBs that source from China reported long supplier lead times in 2025, compared to 52% of businesses that source elsewhere. That gap widened significantly in 2026 when 75% of China-sourcing businesses reported long lead times compared to 42% of businesses sourcing elsewhere.
That pushed the gap from 9 percentage points in 2025 to 33 percentage points this year.
Supplier reliability generally comes under pressure, too. Netstock found that Lead-time variability impacts 74% of SMBs, long lead times impact 63% and minimum order quantities impact 60%.
But the tariffs have had an effect and businesses haven’t necessarily rushed to switch suppliers.
In the past 12 months, only 35% of U.S. SMB respondents said they switched suppliers due to tariffs. Among those that implemented a change, 44% said the main reason was cost. Country of origin risk was 26 per cent, supplier reliability 15 per cent and tariff driven changes in lead times 11 per cent.
Import bookings from China to the United States (IOTI.CHNUSA) as of Sept. 24 were running below the levels seen at this time the past three years, according to FreightWaves SONAR data.
The IOTI is an index of container import bookings on a 14-day moving average.
“[2026] has been much less chaotic, but perhaps no less stressful, as shippers deal with sharply rising transportation and inventory costs in a very shaky consumer environment,” Zach Strickland, SONAR’s head of freight market intelligence, wrote in a recent report.
“Politics are becoming more and more linked to economics, which is making a lot of people queasy about the state of things, although the aggregate figures give a fairly steady picture,” added Strickland.
Earlier orders may pull forward freight demand
Businesses also want to minimize their exposure to disruption during peak season.
Fifty-three percent of SMBs are ordering earlier or buying more ahead of peak season. Thirty-nine percent of SMBs are using forecasting and planning tools more. Only 10% said they switched or added suppliers.
This earlier purchasing behavior can pull freight demand forward for transportation providers. It may lead to increased volumes ahead of traditional seasonal peaks, but weaker demand later, as companies clear out inventory already in their warehouses.
However, Netstock’s findings also underscore the risks of early inventory buildup and not accurately matching supply with actual demand.
Only 44% of companies that were ordering earlier reported service levels over 90%. That compares with 62% for businesses that had not been ordering earlier.
Companies that bought early also did not have much better dead-stock rates.
According to Netstock, the biggest supply chain challenge of 2026 isn’t about fixing a single, isolated disruption. Instead, companies are increasingly forced to deal with continuous uncertainty as a normal part of their day-to-day operations.
Why it matters: A wider supplier footprint can move freight across ocean gateways, cross-border corridors and domestic transportation networks, but it can also increase the complexity of logistics operations.
